It's Only Hair
by WargishBoromirFan
Summary: It'll grow back. Eventually. Sorry. - Snippets from the Fire Nation's royal family, from General Iroh to Zuko to Mai to Izumi to General Iroh.
1. Unpinned

**A/N - So, I haven't published anything in a ridiculously long time, but here's a drabble series back in AtLA/LoK 'verse, just because if I publish I can stop picking at them and let them stay loosely connected drabbles with full Noodle Incidents in between them. Now, my comics knowledge is spotty, but I gotta love Mai even more for her willingness to call bullhorse droppings when she sees them. Any echoes to another character are entirely intentional.**

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"Avatar. You ruined my wedding." Mai stalked up to Aang in the bedraggled remains of what had once been a very nice silk kimono, her artfully arranged updo soaked and windblown and maybe a little singed on one end, though Aang wouldn't take personal responsibility for the last. He was more worried about the last three kunai she was openly gripping between pale, scraped knuckles and torn elbow-length gloves. That brooch pin was probably long enough to do some significant damage in her hands, as well.

Aang backed as far as he could before he felt the crack of shattered porcelain beneath his feet, trying to move just slowly enough not to look like he was being chased. There were enraged wild predators trampling through the remains of the pavilion, just waiting for a likely target to display an ounce of weakness, and also a large furry animal was attempting to climb the last standing pillar. He envied that beast. "I am so sorry, Mai; we had no idea that they'd choose to strike here of all places, and I didn't know about the buffalo-squirrel, and I am so, so sorry that it got loose…"

Mai cut him off with a raised palm - her free hand, though that would not slow her down in the least.

"Shame about your fiance," Zuko offered tentatively, trying to deflect his ex's attention long enough for Aang to fly. Awfully brave of him. Aang figured he probably shouldn't abandon the Firelord yet. "He seemed like a nice guy… at least until he tried to assassinate me."

"You ruined my dad's colony. You don't get to talk." Mai leveled her knives at Zuko, fortunately still in her steely grip. "What were you doing here, anyway?"

"Well, there was a rift in the Order of the White Lotus and someone tried to bust Ozai out of prison and then a rash of thefts in the new Republic City -"

"You know what? I've decided I don't care," Mai interrupted Aang again.

"The important thing is that nobody died." Aang tried not to end that sentence in a question mark. Mai looked too close to the edge to be tempted.

"You ruined my wedding," Mai repeated, biting out every word. The Avatar could only take cold comfort in the fact that she'd locked eyes with Zuko as she'd spoken. He'd become too used to Toph calling him out without even turning her head.

It was too much to ask that Toph's group had come to deal with this instead, wasn't it? Mai liked Toph.

The angered Fire Nation noblewoman in question let out a huff, drawing her blades back a few centimeters from her ex's chest. All the more leverage for a direct jab. "It's always going to be like this with you, isn't it? Endless drama and danger and grand gestures right when I think I've washed my hands of you, mostly because you don't know when to let someone else work out their own problems or leave yours well enough alone. We're not together anymore, but you think I would've let them kill you?" There was something besides sheer annoyance in her yellow eyes as she raised her voice, but when he still didn't know the self-trained assassin with the knives well enough to divine all the subtleties of her moods, Aang figured it was safest to assume that was boiling rage.

Somehow, Zuko wasn't as cautious. "You broke up with me. I'm under strict orders not to break up with you." Brave man, to talk when he'd been told not to.

Mai growled, throwing herself at Zuko. Her kunai hit their targets, but it was only to pin the Firelord to the broken and overturned table by his sleeve and either side of his collar. She hadn't even broken any skin, even if she'd aimed scant finger-lengths away from Zuko's major arteries. "Avatar," she addressed the Airbender from atop her last poor unfortunate victim, "we are about to have a very loud, protracted argument. You may wish to make yourself scarce." She didn't have to tell Aang twice. And Sokka thought the "oogies" with Katara had been bad.

Aang heard one last feeble sally from his friend as he abandoned Zuko to his fate. "Can I offer you a better one?"


	2. Let Loose

**I said I was just going to set these drabbles free, but guess who finally came back to roost for an extra scene before we get to the little oneshot that got these started? Hey, if Suyin's presence allows me to get extra self-indulgent and say that at least two of the scenarios in "The Daughters of Bei Fong"could work with canon as far as I know it, why not let the muses run loose like sugar-high toddlers? They got in line long enough to crank out a decent Nano day of a chapter in about that amount of time.**

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"You can't truly expect me to be introduced to a firebending master potentially good enough to teach _me_ something while looking like this, can you?" At least two out of the three ostensible "well wishers" observing the latest argument from the balcony had no idea what Azula was complaining about, though long familiarity with the Firelord's sister suggested to the last that it had something to do with her hair.

"Azula," her "honor guard," and probably the driving force behind this trip, had a voice of honey and chamomile, but Ty Lee certainly didn't lack the muscle to pull the princess's hand away from the minute flaw in her bangs, "these little quirks just make you you. It's okay. They're not going to think any less of you for being human instead of a perfect painting of a firebender." She continued to talk Azula back from the edge in a low voice, but Mai couldn't hear the rest over the loud, impatient huff from the woman standing next to her.

"They're still at it? Tell Princess Crazypants she looks flawless to me," Toph smarted off, though Mai quickly elbowed her for silence with her free arm.

"Don't call her that."

Toph shrugged openly. "Why not? We're all thinking it." At least she'd kept her voice down this time.

"Ty Lee doesn't need any more trouble." What Mai said was true. Keeping Azula cooperative could only help them all in the long run, foremostly Azula herself.

Toph shrugged again, this one an unspoken concession to the Fire Lady's point. "What I don't understand is why Butterwasp keeps coming back for her." As airy and bubbly as Ty Lee was, Toph had more reason than most to fear her chi-blocking sting, and the blind woman's nickname for the Kyoshi Warrior reflected that.

"She's her best friend," Mai replied, absently bouncing Izumi on her hip when her daughter began to fidget.

"So were you, once," Toph countered, making grabby hands for the toddler without turning her head from the scene below. She was good with kids, but Mai didn't indulge "Tanty Toth" or the wriggling Izumi yet.

"I have found, over the years, that there are very few things worth getting excited about," Mai spoke loftily from the long and hoary experience of being three years older than Toph.

The earthbender just snorted. "I'd ask what you do bother to get excited about, if you weren't refusing to fork her over. Come on, Knives, I didn't even think you liked kids that much when I first met you."

Katara and her "midgets" had not visited recently, and Toph insisted that a quarter of the reason she hung out with them was to get in her quality time with the anklebiters.

"The only baby I was regularly around at that time was Tom-Tom, and my brother is the same brilliant young nobleman who decided that a jangly rubber toy designed for pet fire ferrets would be the perfect present for the Firelord's heir apparent." What was worse is that Mai suspected that her little brother had bought it for Druk, only to find that the dragon was now large enough to fit Tom-Tom's entire arm in his mouth, much less the toy.

"And you love Jingjang, don't you, munchkin?" Toph cooed to Izumi.

"Gingdang!" Izumi confirmed joyfully, rattling the rubber mouse-bird she'd been gnawing on while the women watched her blood aunt depart. It had been good for teething.

"I should've let the Avatar kidnap him," Mai groaned, mostly for show.

"Pfft, you know we were trying to drop him off with your parents before we even knew what the kid was like. We just didn't know if they'd take him back." Toph airly waved away the subject, then cocked her head as Ty Lee stepped away from adjusting some small stray strand around Azula's face and smiled, taking the elder princess's hand and leading her to the komodo-rhinos. Zuko and Druk were already ready to leave, but the dragon still wasn't big enough yet to take passengers.

"Hey, Mai?" Toph asked in a much less cocky tone.

Mai waited for her to continue, but the blind earthbender seemed willing to let the moment stretch to an uncomfortable length. "Yes?"

"What made you take him back?" She wasn't asking about Tom-Tom.

"What, the whole last-minute charge clinging to the side of a buffalo-squirrel in order to rescue me from a marriage made more for money than love wasn't romantic enough for you?" Mai had been furious at the time. Looking back on it, she could understand why Toph, Sokka, and Katara had laughed themselves sick at the story. It helped that Katara had been upset with Aang and Zuko for trampling quite literally over her day. It hadn't that Sokka had offered them his moose-lion for the next time Appa was too big to fit through the door and they needed a dramatic entrance. Foo-Foo Cuddlypoops still liked to rest his sabertoothed head on anyone unwise enough to stand still beneath him, and the moose-lion drooled.

"That wasn't why you accepted. You're smarter than some empty-headed mushball, Knives, and your dad might've burned a lot of the family money, but you didn't do it for status or fruit tarts, either." Mai rolled her eyes, smiling despite herself. Toph wouldn't see, either way. "I know he'd hurt you, though. Not physically and not on purpose, but still, how do you let that go?"

Mai straightened, bringing Izumi into both arms as she took a step towards the rail, watching her childhood friends turned family clamber onto their mounts. Druk flapped up into a clumsy circle around Zuko's head, scaring the komodo-rhino, and the Firelord bit back a curse, fighting for his seat. But as soon as he'd swallowed the second half of a word that he didn't want drifting up to the ears of his garrulous two-year-old daughter, Zuko patted the leathery shoulder beneath him and whistled to his adolescent dragon, waving for Druk to fly ahead as their vanguard. The komodo-rhinos that he, Ty Lee, and Azula rode were used to Druk, but they were calmer once the predatory shadow wasn't directly overhead. Once he confirmed that his sister and Ty Lee were settled in, Zuko turned to wave at the figures on the balcony. Mai waved back, taking Izumi's hand in hers to say one last goodbye to her father.

"Like that, I suppose," she told Toph, who offered her own belated loud and slightly off-color farewell. The earthbender had already been threatened for swearing in front of the babies, so she didn't repeat that mistake for fear of word getting back to Katara, but it was a good thing that Izumi wasn't aping gestures as well as words. "But the reason I accepted Zuko back, or at least part of it, just left to heal with the Sun Tribe."

"Azula?" Toph asked incredulously, absently pulling odd shapes of stone and metal from the balcony railing to amuse Izumi - and perhaps distract herself from the conversation, even though she had started it.

"At the time, she was disguising herself as the Kemurikage," Mai replied. "A spirit from my childhood nightmares."

She picked up the rubber toy from where her daughter had dropped it. Izumi was entranced with the stone moving under her hands and feet now, but there would be a hue and cry at naptime if Jingjang were not set in pride of place on the princess's pillow, especially since Papa wasn't home to sing her a lullaby. Mai had a voice far better suited to reading stories than carrying a tune, and she was uncertain if she would be game for five rounds of the same picture book with the curious monkey-kitten this afternoon. She would miss the singing, too, even if Zuko tended to be nearly as off-key as she was completely flat. (Good thing Izumi wouldn't ever have to sing for her supper; she was genetically predestined to be incapable of carrying a tune in a bucket.)

"Azula was using my fear to control what I loved. She was molding Zuko into something more like what she had become, manipulating him with a shadow of vengeance that she'd learned about from me. But my love is stronger than my fear." Oh, he'd had to prove it, on more than the one infamous buffalo-squirrel occasion, but while Mai might sometimes curse her husband's overdramatic gestures and tendency to take every setback for the country as a slight against his personal honor, she also loved that his first instinct was to step up and fix everything himself. It would be the death of them both, but Zuko wasn't going to let fear control him, either. "I figure if those are what drive Zuko, then I might as well skip the middleman."

"It does get you better access to fruit tarts that way." Toph poked her in the side while her hands were too full of Izumi and Jingjang to retaliate. "You've been stepping heavier lately, Knives." Well, Mai hadn't planned on saying anything until after Azula was safely ensconced with the Sun Tribe and on the mend, but trust the blind woman to see… "But how do you tell when you're able to fix something versus when you should just let it go?"

"What's-his-name didn't come with you," Mai observed in turn, happy to grab this thread instead of letting Toph pursue the clue too far. Especially if she was reading the reasons for the earthbender's line of stubborn but strangely reluctant questions correctly. "Johto?"

"Kanto," Toph corrected, smoothing the railing back to its original position with a stomp of her foot so that she could flop over morosely. "We're on a break."

"You seem to be on break every time you travel out of the Earth Kingdom." And as instrumental as Toph was in setting up the Republic City police department, she traveled a lot.

"Yeah."

Even Izumi burbled inquisitively at that dismissive statement of bald fact, and Mai relented and handed her off to snuggle and pat Toph's face with uncoordinated affection.

"So, Knives, I ask you for your specialty - no mercy, no truth-bending: do I give up?"

"I never give up," Mai said. "I lie in wait, and then I let fly." Azula kept stooping for the wrong targets, but even the most embattled messenger hawk could be trained, eventually. She kept coming back, after all.

Toph held Izumi close, kissing the little girl on her hairline like an upset child misplacing needed solicitude with her doll. Fortunately, as far as Mai was concerned, no sympathy given to her daughter was ever completely wasted. Izumi mirrored back what she was given with the same honest intensity of her father. "Well, if he doesn't let me fly then he's gonna learn that there isn't a cage that can hold me," Toph muttered. "But that doesn't mean I'm giving up on one o' these, either. You sure I can't steal her if you've got another on the way?"

"Zuko would be upset to come home and find his daughter missing," Mai refused her dryly. "But now that Katara has two and we're having a second, it seems like you and Suki have some catching up to do."


	3. The Dreaded

**So this was the first one I wrote, because when fandom gives you both the opportunity to salute two awesome characters and poke fun at a silly adaptation, then you embrace it full** **metallically** **.**

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"What happened to your hair?" Mai's voice was flat as she cast an impassive yellow gaze upon the man seated in the floor upon but one square pillow in deference to his old knees, and the little girl standing on the chair behind him. This morning, upon waking, said girl's hair had been secured in a high bun befitting her station and pinned with a three-pointed flame, and the old man had left his thinning gray mane loose to his shoulders, as was typical for him these days. Even when he hosted royal family members, he had never stood much on ceremony. He was prouder of his tea shop than his title, and said that he'd lost too much to make a proper topknot sit in place anymore, anyway.

They had certainly tested the limits of what could be done with Iroh's remaining hair. Even as her mother approached, Izumi added another tiny, slightly uneven braid to the collection trailing down the back of her great-uncle's head, securing it with a bit of thread wrapped several times around the end and triple knotted firmly. Iroh would have better luck with a pair of scissors than picking out the stubby, fraying ends of the seven-year-old's boat knots. Izumi sported a similar head full of chunky black locks, halfway tumbling out of her ponytail and into her face. The girl had inherited her father's sheep-kitten fluff, so Mai could only be thankful that the main gathering had been pulled back with a clasp instead of the tight ebony thread barely visible around the ends. The ones in the very back of Izumi's crown looked smoother as well, as if the girl had either gotten more practice or more help by the time she'd finished the braids in her bangs.

"The princess has been informing me of the newest fashion trends," Iroh explained, holding perfectly still for his would-be stylist until she handed him a half-finished braid to keep in place while she gathered more thread. That embroidery spool looked suspiciously like one of Mai's from her maid's traveling kit. "Apparently Water-Tribe-style braid loopies and ponytails -"

" _Wolf_ -tails, Uncle Iroh!" his great-niece corrected him with a giggle.

"- Wolf-tails have become the latest rage among the young folks, and as a generous connoisseur with a keen eye, Princess Izumi has graciously agreed to assist me in updating my look." Back perfectly straight as he handed the girl the braid end to be tied off, Iroh met Mai's gaze with as earnestly genial an expression as he might have worn in court, no matter the plain and slightly shabby green robes he wore. If she recognized that tea stain on his cuff, he'd had this same set for nearly ten years. "So? How does it look? I know the princess still has a way to go with me, but I think it suits her quite nicely."

Fortunately, her daughter cracked before Mai did, and her husband's uncle was distracted by a fresh round of girlish giggles before the Fire Lady had to decide whether or not to fight the reflexive jump in her cheek muscles. "Did you include your sister in your makeover session?" Best to remain fair and impartial and never, ever tip her hand before she had to strike - or laugh.

Izumi stuck out her lip at the mention of the younger princess. "Honoria didn't want to play." There were a few advantages to having a five-year-old already as self-possessed and aristocratic as Mai herself. At least she wouldn't be stuck with two miniature dandelion heads when the dreads inevitably had to come out. Even if they were cute in ways that Mai would never admit even in the privacy of her own head. "But see, we can pull his braids up and then he can be Uncle Ear-oh!" Gathering the finished product and tucking it behind her great-uncle's ears, Izumi attacked her mother's resolve with a grin entirely too large for her face. Its match only barely fit on the old man. The Fire Lady brought a hand over her mouth in thought, though it did less than she'd hoped to still the muscles around the corners of her eyes. Her girls certainly found new ways to keep Mai from getting bored.

Iroh kept his hair braided for the next two years, never taking out the dreadlocks. When Izumi cut hers in mourning, her hair grew back with a permanent subtle but distinct curl.


	4. Old Tangles

A/N: Not mine; there were a lot of references that I wanted to get in, but we'll have to see how well the gaps can be smoothed over...

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"Normally, a fellow Waterbender would have been the first to alert you, but I'm sure you can understand why Master Katara was not up to the task," Zuko said, accepting the cup as the three adults settled in for business, the children dismissed to go play. Even though Unalaq was younger than her, something about his fine boned face and fine bone china and her father's serious expression made Izumi feel as if they had made a mistake in not sending her to run along as well, but she was Firelord now. The five-pointed crown rested in her hair, not Zuko's anymore. She could handle the dark times, even if she felt out of her element in this austere northern reception chamber.

"But of course." Unalaq was perfectly gracious, perfectly steady, and as empathetic as the cold, hard chair beneath her, no matter his perfectly solicitous words. "Such unfortunate circumstances must be hard on her and her children. We all grieve Avatar Aang's loss." And Zuko, his daughter knew, placed the blame for said loss squarely on his own shoulders, even when there was no reason to. Zuko had blamed himself when Suyin ran off to join the circus, insisting that he should have been a better substitute father figure for Aunt Toph's girls as well as his own daughters, even though duty kept them in separate countries for most of the Beifongs' childhoods. Zuko had blamed himself for the rift between the Avatar's older two children and their parents, though that had happened long before Bumi joined the United Republic military and Kya set out alone for the adventures their parents hadn't taken her on. Zuko blamed himself for the criminal elements in Republic City, for Aunt Azula, for Mai no longer being there to rap some sense into her husband's head and knock at least a little of the unnecessary guilt from his overburdened shoulders. "I'm sure this is not easy on you, either, Firelord, what with the recent loss of your spouse."

"Oh? I do miss my mother, but there is nothing wrong with my husband, the last I heard." Izumi might feel like a wayward child, but she refused to be dismissed as one. Sig had stayed home while she and their son made these bittersweet diplomatic visits with her father, but Zuko was there as a member of the White Lotus, a help and comfort to his daughter as she trained her son. Izumi and Crown Prince Iroh were there to stand for the Fire Nation as they hunted down the new Avatar. She just couldn't make eye contact with Zuko right now.

"My apologies, Firelord Izumi." Unalaq bowed his head politely, but it still felt like rote condescension. Three years ago, people joked that Zuko had stepped down because Mai had been the true ruler. Now the gossips were just as quick to say that Sig was the one really getting things done as the power behind her throne, as if his title of Phoenix King were something more than a shared joke at her grandfather's expense and a way to maneuver around the ill-fitting traditional title of Fire Lady.

"We are all still adjusting." Most who knew the family said that Izumi had inherited her temper from her father, but it was Zuko who stepped in to smooth things over, even if he appeared uncomfortable at doing so. "Still, with your strong ties to the spirit realm, we would like to keep a close eye on your twins. It's possible that the next member of the Avatar cycle could not only be one of your people, but perhaps even one of your family members." The twins were a bit old for it, at two and a half already, but it wasn't likely that the White Lotus would find their next Avatar for nearly ten years yet, anyway. Bending prodigies like Eska and Desna would keep them occupied in the meantime, even if neither developed skills beyond their native water. Certainly the two seemed to run their mother ragged; Unalaq's wife had retired with an exhausted smile as soon as she'd greeted the guests and excused herself and the children, Iroh following somewhat reluctantly after his younger hosts and asking for a washroom.

"Mom! There's ice spikes and dead fish and a monster spirit in the bathtub!" Iroh burst in to the icy throne room breathlessly, his topknot askew and unleashing his long, thick black hair nearly straight up in fright. Speak of the fox-goat and it would come running. "It wanted me to bring it all our elderly!"

Izumi traded glances over her tea with Unalaq and her father, cupping the liquid close even as she applied more heat. The former Firelord raised an eyebrow above the scarred side of his face, but the northern chieftain barely looked up as he sipped his own brew. It had to be cold by now. "I have felt no restless spirits," Unalaq said, unruffled by the boy's sudden appearance. "Have you perhaps done something to draw their ire?"

Izumi liked this line of questioning even less than the northern chieftain conveniently forgetting her title, but her son answered before she could speak up. "I punched a fish, but it was coming straight at my head!"

"As your 'elderly,' perhaps I should see what this spirit wants," Zuko said, beginning to stand, but Izumi waved her father back to his seat, firmly setting down her cup.

"I'll take care of it, father. Chief Unalaq, if you will pardon me for a moment? Perhaps the two of you might discuss the Order's methods to narrow down the list of potential benders while I see to this spirit." Unalaq nodded, and Izumi kept her hand on her boy's shoulder, letting him lead her to the scene of the disturbance. She needed a break, even as early in the discussions as it was, and dealing with this offered at least a chance of keeping a certain level of dignity. She was loathe to leave Unalaq to assume negotiations with Zuko, but Izumi liked the idea of facing him alone even less. She tried, but she had never managed her mother's perfect stoic mask, nor her elder aunt's skill at manipulating others' emotions as her younger sister Honoria could. Aunt Kiyi had always praised Izumi's good heart, as if she could brighten someone's day with her desire for honest work as much as her father's half-sister could with but a smile, but Aunt Kiyi looked for the best in everyone. For now, though, the Firelord trusted her father to stall while she acted on her motherly heart.

The washroom was rather impressive, even for a Waterbending stronghold. Icy spikes ran in low mats along the long counter and sparkling walls, and the taller ones along the lip of the claw-foot tub were impaled with some sort of tuna-mackerel. The sodden remains of the punched koi, slightly cooked from impact, stared up from the seal-bear rug, while a watery form only a couple of feet tall stamped through the tub waves as if La were rampaging in miniature. "We shall have our rewenge!"

Desna's lisp ruined the effect only slightly, but Iroh's eyes had widened all the same. Izumi bit the inside of her lip to school her expression back into quietude, and then used the hand on her son's shoulder to tap twice and point out where Eska was refreezing the ice from her hiding place in the linen closet. Really, these two were amazing benders, and not only for their age. Iroh still struggled to bring forth the flames when he willed it at nine years old; he'd admitted before he left that part of the reason he'd retreated to the bathroom was in hopes of warming himself in all the hot water on tap. Catching sight of the little girl, the prince allowed a faltering, awkward chuckle at his fears, relaxing under his mother's steady hand.

"You!" the would-be water spirit extended a tendril in his direction. "You shall not laugh at us! We shall break the line of the Avatars for what they did to us, and have rewenge on the Fire Nation!" Iroh gulped again.

Perhaps Izumi shouldn't be surprised that Unalaq's children were already so eloquent, but it still felt like a sign of her relative incompetence. They must have already been subject to far more formal speeches than she had been at her own son's age to have absorbed such diction and allow Desna to parrot it back.

"Greetings, o great ocean spirit," Izumi played along. There were worse figures she would have to answer to than the next generation's indoctrinated images of her forefathers' sins. "We wish to bring balance back to the lives of the Northern Water Tribe, as they once brought balance back to the spirit realm. Is there some way we might appease the kin of Yue, our beloved moon spirit?"

She expected the twins to ask for some treat or toy, perhaps a show of firebending. They weren't yet three, and it might take them a moment to process what Izumi asked. So the little water sprite's immediate demand threw the Firelord slightly off guard. "I get to be chief, all right? After Daddy."

"I don't see why you wouldn't," Izumi allowed. The chieftainship was a little less formally associated with one family than the position of Firelord, but Unalaq, though a younger son, had inherited it from his father, who had in turn inherited it from his second cousin Arnook only because Arnook had had no surviving children…

"Me and Desna both," the little monster in the tub added on, and the hidden twin emerged to stand beside it. The waterbender in the tub still maintained the liquid disguise, but when they were right next to each other, Izumi had to reexamine her original guess as to which was which. The thick matching blue furs on small bodies made it harder to tell.

"The Firelord and her heir acknowledge it." Izumi nodded seriously. They'd figure it out when the twins were older, but as long as the two of them worked together as well as they did, there was no reason not to encourage fairness between the siblings.

"Eska? Desna? Oh, Firelord Izumi, Prince Iroh, I really do apologize for any disturbance." Malina held one hand to her throat, the other on her hip as she leaned against the doorway, caught between relief and exasperation.

"No trouble at all," Izumi told the chief's wife. She didn't know the younger woman particularly well, but the northerner had presented a much warmer, if less polished, front than her husband. Malina stood with her hair in a single loose braid down her back and little in finery besides her engagement necklace, offering Izumi the secret sororal smile of harried mothers everywhere.

"My mother would say that this is what comes from training a girl in more than healing bending, but we could hardly keep Eska away from her brother long enough to try to train them differently." The water blob melted away from Eska as her mother spoke, revealing a stony glower more troubling than the miniature ocean spirit. The girl was used to being talked over as if she weren't in the room. Desna's body language was a mirror of his sister's: two sets of slumped shoulders, two pairs of clever hands held loosely at their sides, two silver tongues silent behind clenched jaws. They both expected to be ignored and belittled, at not yet three. Malina meant well, but this cold north was a different world than the one that had made Izumi Firelord.

She would make sure it was a better one. She had enough of Sozin's blood for that. "I look forward to seeing what they both will do with their training."

The chief's wife was not a bender. Neither was her mother. The old prejudices of the northern tribe were repeated without understanding. That didn't make it any better to hear her lean down to her children's eye level and berate them in soft, reasonable-sounding words not simply for scaring their guests, but for abusing their art. Izumi smoothed her own Iroh's hair, gathering the fire within her before she stepped in to face Malina.

"Truly, it's all right," she told the chief's wife. "It is an honor to see what such bright young sparks can do when they put their minds to such efforts." Izumi made sure to make eye contact with each child in turn as she spoke. If Malina took the complement for herself, Desna and Eska would know that it was meant for them.

Wordlessly, Izumi took her own son by the shoulders and nodded to the exit, offering the twins a quick wink over her shoulder as the Fire Nationals returned to business. Those quick tongues were still too quiet; those hands too still, but the twin spines were straight beneath the fuzzy blue robes. Then Iroh stuck his tongue out at the younger children as he followed beneath his mother's wing, not yet quite as ready to let the past go. It was hardly diplomatic, but it drew a pair of hoarse giggles all the same, and Izumi relaxed despite what awaited her back in the main chamber.

Unalaq didn't look up as she entered. "Any luck calming the spirits, or should I step in?" the Water Tribe leader asked mildly, sipping languidly at his tea.

"Iroh and I have it handled," Izumi told him firmly. "Well, no luck with the Avatar yet, but I think I've found Mother's reincarnations," she added quietly to her father as she resumed her seat.

"Reincarnations?" Zuko warily noted the plural.

It wasn't diplomatic to lean in and share the private memory with her father. Izumi's own mother would have told her that proper ladies didn't gossip. The Firelord thought she would have forgiven this moment, though, with inscrutable humor glittering in the eyes Mai had passed on to her daughter. "Both of them can draw knives out of thin air and make them disappear just as quickly. Noble. Elegant. Laughs like a strangled jackdaw-rabbit, and the latter not nearly often enough."

"I honestly do sometimes wonder what would have happened if your mother had been a bender. Usually shudder in fear afterwards."


	5. Final Cut

**A/N- I own nothing, because I come from a fandom who knows how to differentiate kids who share a name with an OG badass who isn't nearly as big a joke in his position of power as he pretends to be. I make no apologies, because I love these Soldier As.**

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The newly-promoted Lieutenant Iroh stood before the Fire Nation ambassador's house, his Republic City uniform pressed, shoes shined, hair slicked back as best he could, posture straight, and gloves not one wrong move away from going up in flames, he swore. He wasn't looking for a fight, but he fully expected that the mere sight of him on these premises could lead to an international incident. He took a deep breath and knocked.

"Ah, come in. She'll be with you in a moment, I'm sure." The man who had stuck his nose around the door opened it a little further, backing up to allow the lieutenant entrance, and then returned to his paper.

Iroh attempted some basic pleasantry, but a voice rose from the rear of the open-floor entryway, announcing the ambassador to the republic before she made her way through the paper dividers. "Who is it?"

"Your nephew, dear," Hiro replied without looking up from his reports.

"Moofy!" Councillor Honoria was striding forward in joy for about three steps between coming around the screen and catching sight of Iroh for herself, and then she sprinted the rest of the way, taking his cheeks in her hands with worried clucking, turning his head this way and that. "Who dishonored you, darling boy? Some loose girl? A soldier without respect for our royal line? Oh, once they see me coming they will wish they could fight this with force."

"Hello, Aunt Honoria," Iroh attempted to calm her down before she could build up to a proper rage. Whereas her husband seemed unruffled by earthquakes and active volcanoes, Princess Honoria of the Fire Nation preferred to worry a problem to death - even one so minor as a haircut. "No one shamed me; I chose to cut my topknot of my own free will."

"Nonsense, Moofy, you are a prince - the crown prince - and I must see to it that no one takes advantage of your sweet nature." She certainly seemed to miss the irony as she directed him with wordless imperiousness toward a seat, hands at his epaulets as if he were still a child. His uncle took a sip of his coffee, sliding Iroh a cup without making eye contact. "Our nation's history may have its dark spots, but our traditions are to be respected and no stuffed-shirt sargent is going to pressure my little Moofy into cutting off his Moofy-poofy." The ambassador dropped a kiss into her nephew's pomade, and then was right back into her full-tilt rant. "I am Firelord Izumi's hand-picked ambassador and have seen this republic grow from some jumped-up abandoned colonies under my father's hand and I'm not afraid to set the whole city back in line if I have to. You and I carry the blood of Avatars and kings, Moofy, and don't think that just because I might not bend fire as well as my sister doesn't mean that I can't bend people to my will. If they want to try us like the upstarts tried our ancestors, then I will show them what a daughter of Firelord Zuko can do."

There were times when Iroh wished he had had siblings, or even a first cousin by blood - his mother had plenty of tales of the warmth and lessons of growing up with a little sister, his captain could leave the whole unit rolling with the pranks he and his sister had pulled on their younger brother, and twins like Eskna and Desna seemed inseparable. But then there were times when he was jealous of those hypothetical siblings and children of Honoria for not existing. "Aunt," he cut in, as soon as he felt he could get half a word in edgewise and not be completely dismissed. "You sound like Great-Aunt Azula in Grandfather's stories."

"Aunt Azula and her Sun Tribe would know plenty about regaining what has been lost. Do you need me to take you to her, pet? I will get you a leave of absence from your regiment; we'll bring Hiro and make a family trip of it." At least she'd leaned into his side, willing to conspire with Iroh if not listen to him.

"I mean like in the scary ones that made Grandmother snippy."

Honoria had the gall to laugh. "Well, Aunt Azula probably remembers how to do some of that, too. Start packing, Moofy, we'll leave in two weeks, as soon as I finish wrangling the rest of the council."

"There's no need," Iroh insisted. It wasn't that he would mind seeing his great-aunt, but there were duties of his own he needed to accomplish. "I'm fine. This was my decision."

"But why on earth would you do such a thing?" the ambassador asked plaintively, sounding far more like a child than one of the highest members of the republic and Fire Nation.

"Probably because you keep calling Lieutenant Iroh 'Moofy,' dear," Hiro said, flipping back another page. "Congratulations on the promotion, by the way."


End file.
